ustxtxb_obs_1966_12_30_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

BUMPERSTRIPS: [KENNEDY’68 Fluorescent, genuine peel-off bumperstrip stock. 1 for 25c 6 for $1 100 for $10 1,000 for $65 Pass the Torch in ’68 Committee P. 0. Box 3395 Austin, Texas 78704 There is growing distrust of the state system as it now stands. Cogswell in ’72 Robert Cogswell, the staff employee of the Texas Society to Abolish Capital Punishment, recently became a valued parttime addition to the Observer business staff. But us literary types at times become so involved with the Muse that we fail to notice what the ‘business side is up to here. I had noticed a car sporting a bumper strip that urged “Cogswell for the People.” I -didn’t pay much attention, even though the strip looked new, not left over from the recent elections. I happened to ask Bob if he knew anything about this; he said the strips are his. He had had some 500 run off to launch his race for the legislature in 1972, when he hopes that a liberal will be heading the Democrats’ national ticket. Cliff Olofson, another business staffer here, a thoughtful man and knowledgeable of politics, is counselling his fellow worker to cool it for awhile; he fears that Cogswell may peak too soon. Senate in Review One of the joys of laboring a block from the University of Texas campus is some of the drop-in company. M. T. Waddell, a government student from Baytown who is now working on his doctorate, was in the other day, fresh from pondering voting habits of the last legislature. Who in the Senate, Waddell asked for openers, opposed John Connally on all 19 votes on ten measures in which the governor had expressed particular interest? Would you believe Dorsey Hardeman? That makes sense, in a way, though. Hardeman, despite being a conservative whose credentials are in very good order, is not a Connally man. Quite the contrary, really. The San Angeloan was the first leading politician to publicly announce his doubt about the wisdom of the governor’s plans to redo the state constitution entering his demurrer even before liberals, who have long sought constitutional revision, began to consider, for one thing, the implications of a constitutional convention made up of delegates elected under the prevailing political climate. Next in line in opposing Connally in the Senate \(on the basis of 14 The Texas Observer ers of Childress, who will not return in January; he opposed the governor on of Galveston cast seven anti-Connally votes; six such votes were cast by H. J. Harrington of Port Arthur. Supporting Connally all 19 times were Tom Creighton of Mineral Wells and Bruce Reagan of Corpus Christi. Grady Hazlewood of Amarillo didn’t vote against the governor on any of the 19 roll calls, but he was absent for seven of the votes. \(The only other absences on the votes in question were two each by Blanchard and D. Roy Harators voted “for the governor” 15 to 18 of the 19 times studied. Of course, this may not be a fair test of whether a 1965 senator was an Establishmentarian or not; some of the issues didn’t involve such considerations. But they were things which the governor had spoken out forthrightly on, Waddell says. These were the votes Waddell selected, programs the governor supported, unless noted otherwise: establishing the Coordinating Board, Texas Colleges and Universities \(plus four amendments, which the mental health and retardation, which the governor opposed; the Texas Fine Arts Commission; air pollution control; the governor’s airplane; the cigarette tax \(plus three amendments, which Connally opernor’s Commission on Aging; water research; state money for HemisFair; and four-year terms for governors. The ACLU in Texas Jack Pemberton, the polished and capable leader of the American Civil Liberties Union, was in Texas earlier this month, his first official trip to the state since mid-1963, I believe it was. Pemberton’s visit three years ago, in Dallas, was a fine experience for many of us who were living there then, when the right wing frenzy in that city was at its height. Naturally some of the rightist cult were on hand when Pemberton \(who happens to be a Repubsince its founding in 1920 and on the urgency of making the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution everyday realities in the country. During a question-and-answer session after his talk, Pemberton was asked several questions that I thought were meant to bait and fluster him; but this man is far too smooth for that. His answers were responsive and unangered. One young man, in particular, a student at North Texas State University, was asking the loaded questions and whispering “THE PIPE HOUSE OF AUSTIN” Will D. Miller & Son Magazines Daily Newspapers High Grade Cigars and Tobaccos Pipes and Accessories 122 West 6th St. Austin, Texas other such questions to his companions, for them to ask. A few months later it was this same young student who spit on Adlai Stevenson during his tumultuous visit to Dallas a month before the assassination. Pemberton faced something of a tough audience in Dallas during his 1963 visit to Texas. Three years later, in Dallas, Pemberton encountered no hostility from his audience and, in fact, was warmly received in the same hall where he had spoken in 1963. In his other appearances, in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, the responie was, with a single brief exception in the latter city, similarly congenial. Three years ago the ACLU was rather new in Texas, but this month Pemberton came to a state where the honored organization which he leads is now making its presence increasingly felt. The five chapters are, month by month, becoming more of a factor in their locales. The Houston chapter, this fall, aided the successful challenge to the school district’s refusal to permit a Negro ninth grader to transfer to a school nearer the student’s home. The ninth grade is the last to be desegregated under the Houston stairstep plan, a move made a year before the school board had planned it, a speed-up caused in large part by the ACLU’s pressure. Other Negroes have since enrolled in previously all-white ninth grades there. The Houston CLU also turned aside plans to “bug” a new jail there. In Dallas the organization is aiding a junior college teacher’s challenge of the state-required loyalty oath and was pursuing court action to permit three longhaired male students to re-enter their public high school. Pemberton, in Dallas, criticized the practice of law officers conspicuously photographing demonstrators. “When police are keeping track of demonstrators because they feel that there is Something wrong with taking a political position on an issue, it is being used an ,unfair device to affect whether the people will participate in the demonstrations,” he said. Pemberton also criticized the military draft system as unfair to young people. “Registrants at age 18 are not told anything, unless they ask,” he said. If a young man raises a question, Pemberton went on, he is given a pamphlet saying he has the right to appeal decisions of the board, but the pamphlet does not specify to whom an appeal should be directed, nor the procedures to follow. Today, nationally, there are only 14 states in which there is no ACLU organization; five years ago there were 22 such states, plus the District of Columbia. Membership is now 85,000, compared to about 30,000 in 1961. The ACLU seems to attract political liberals more than conservatives; this is unfortunate and is not the organization’s intention. Anyone devoted to preservation and extension of the ingenious insights of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will, in the ACLU, improve his understanding of our nation’s commitment to human liberty. Most valuable of all, I think, is the distinction you will see drawn, in ACLU work, between support of